Gaining visual ideas from collage painting

Very cool video on painting from collage in order to find your visual ideas.  I was amazed how big the students were working.  It must be very freeing.  We're working on collage and painting in Henry Sinn's class and I'm hoping to absorb some of his free-spirited ideas and break out of my rut.  I did two collages today but don't think they'd be useful in a painting just yet.  I'll just have to keep working.

More recycled art

Recycled Collage with fused plastic bags

Our on-going rental problems have been keeping me from my favorite blogs lately, but I finally had some time to catch up on a few. Martha Marshall has an interesting post on her blog about working with Tyvek. I perk up when I see someone like Martha doing creative things with cast-offs, such as Tyvek envelopes. The concept of using recycled materials in art, as well as all aspects of life, is appealing to me, especially now that the world's economy and climate is teetering on collapse. I recycled some plastic bags by fusing them with an iron recently, which led to almost asphyxiating myself in the process and a much fussed over abstract painting. Not to be deterred, I used some more of the pieces in my sketchbook. I had tried to fuse some leftover wax paper (I use it under paper in my sketchbook to keep the pages from sticking together when I paint) in between the bags to give some color, but they didn't stick together properly. The elements I used in the above collage are the bottom pieces of the plastic bag and the wax paper. Somehow they did stick. I still have more pieces left to recycle, along with dryer lint, packing "peanuts" and tree bark. I'm not sure where this is leading--probably a circuitous trip to the dump ;D

Completed a page in my sketch book --yipee!!

Mixed media abstract

I'm not sure where the day went, but I did manage to get some painting in. It didn't amount to much, but I did fill a page in my sketch book and managed to spread some paint on some other things I have lying around. I'm determined to fill a page a day--that's a good New Year's resolution! And they don't have to be as intricate as today's--not sure what it means, if anything--just a pencil sketch of a still life will do. Tomorrow I'm determined to clean up my art room--I can't breathe in there, let alone create anything. I guess it shows in this busy piece.

In between running all over the state to go to new doctors, visit rentals, etc. I played around with another abstract collage in Photoshop. It sure is fun, but I felt that maybe I should try some real paints and ween myself off the computer for a change. I'm trying to finish a portrait of Seamus in acrylics and it's driving me nuts. I just can't seem to get the brush strokes (and color) quite right on his face. I vow tomorrow I'm going to finish it one way or another, even if I have to paint over it--which would really finish it!

Photoshopped Collage

I messed around in Photoshop with a collage I did recently, but got side tracked as usual by the latest catastrophe. Let's see, what was it today? Oh, yeah. Stock market, scandals, investigations, plummeting stock prices and my propensity to always seem to be on the wrong side of whatever fiasco is going down. Buy high and sell low isn't a winning strategy, but that seems to be the one I'm stuck with. I'm not even going to think about it anymore. Any money I may have left is going to go into a CD at the bank. Oh, yeah, I forgot--the banks are failing. Well, soon I won't have anything to worry about. Yipee!!!